The proposed research intends to empirically examine those variables theorized to effect the psychological health and well- being of women attempting to leave abusive partners. The study will include a longitudinal, experimental design, and will employ multi-method strategies to measure level of battering, self-esteem, depression, control and mastery, coping skills, community resources and social support, and psychological well-being over a two-year period following residence at a battered women's shelter. In order to examine hypothesized causal and correlative relationships, the effects of an intervention designed to help women mobilize community resources and social support will be examined. It is hypothesized that the increase in community resources and social support will lead to increased psychological health and well-being, as well as less abuse. The research utilizes a factorial design with two independent variables--time and the two levels of experimental condition. Interview outcome measures and archival outcome variables will be collected at five points--time zero, lO-weeks (post intervention), 6-months, 12-months, and 24-months. Extensive verbal interviews will be administered to 216 subjects, 216 nominated peers, and 108 intervention agents. Archival data will also be collected from the battered women's shelter and intervention agents' written weekly records. This study will also examine the relationship between the following variables both within and across the five assessment periods: 1) self-esteem, 2) depression, 3) control and mastery, 4) coping skills, 5) access to community resources and social support, 6) abuse, and 7) psychological well-being. Within the time period, the concurrent relationships among the variables will be examined. By also examining these relationships across time through path modeling, the potential causal ordering can begin to be examined.